Masculinity, Sexuality and the Visual Culture of Glam Rock

Abstract

Glam Rock, a musical style accompanied by a flamboyant dress code emerged during the early 1970s. This essay looks at the changing representations of masculinity which occured during the late 1960s and early 1970s, leading eventually to the Glam Rock phenomenon. The impact of social changes including the legalisation of homosexuality and the growth of the women's liberation movement and their effect on male representation will be explored. There will be an examination fashion and retailing formen, "unisex" style to demonstrate how menswear became increasingly feminised, culminating eventually in the adoption of full transvestism by male performing artists like David Bowie. The relationship between Glam Rock and other musical subcultures will also be discussed with a view to explaining how the eventual adoption of transvestism by Glam Rock performers exposed and challenged the hegemony of the prevailing metanarrative of heterosexual male freedom within 1970s popular culture.

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